Bambi (1942)
Directed by David Hand
Bambi's tale unfolds from season to season as the young prince of the forest learns about life, love, and friends.
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What critics compared Bambi to
For not only do these Sean Penn-mimicking sea turtles slowly slip into a stronger story about paternal love and overcoming fear, but Finding Nemo also connects with these awfully dark themes that are strangely reminiscent of Walt's great classics like Bambi and Dumbo.
The death of Nemo's mother, which occurs early in the film (and is offscreen - no blood or overt violence to speak of) recalls a similar event from the classic Bambi.
The opener, in which clownfish Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) loses his wife and most of their eggs in a barracuda attack, ranks right up there with “Bambi.”
The movie's opening sequence depicts a traumatic loss that brings to mind old-school Disney pics such as Bambi; granted, it's handled in a way that probably won't sink your kids into the slough of despond, but the scene is pretty powerful.
Right off the bat Stanton pulls a "Bambi," when a fishy mom disappears after a scary barracuda attack.
Cartoony character design notwithstanding, Finding Nemo has a love for the natural world that’s a credit to the tradition of Bambi and The Lion King .
With an emphasis on character development over plot, the film isn't quite as accessible as some of Disney's more recent efforts; kids raised on plot and gag heavy productions such as Aladdin and The Lion King will likely express confusion at Bambi's relatively docile vibe.
A host of living animals were brought into the studio for this reason, leading some of the animators to complain that it was becoming a bit zoo-like, but the effect is breathtaking: the subtleties of movement and musculature are as close to perfection as imaginable (Disney wouldn't even attempt to create animals this realistic again until The Lion King , more than 50 years later), and the film vies only with Pinocchio as the most technically accomplished work of animation to come from the studio's Golden Age.
Fans of "The Lion King" will recognize similar elements in "Bambi."
In a plot twist unfamiliar to this era of family-values emphasis, the screenplay draws on the same tragic theme expressed in Disney’s 1942 feature “Bambi”: the death of a parent.
Its pitch was simple, and rather peculiar: " Bambi plus Hamlet", and here I was thinking that I was all sorts of clever for spotting a really insane number of parallels between that deer movie and The Lion King, before doing my research for this review.
The death of a parent as a plot device brings to mind Bambi, but mostly this is a film in keeping with the Disney renaissance of the 90s: slick and action-packed, with vain attempts to be seen as 'with it'.
Obviously 1967’s animated The Jungle Book is the main inspiration for this Disney extravaganza, but its creative forebearer is actually 1942’s Bambi .
The Jungle Book has its moments of darkness and it fits in perfectly with Disney’s brutal tradition of shedding parents and parental figures; you can hear the gun shot from Bambi still ringing throughout The Jungle Book .
The film starts with a scary chase, fills out its middle with a couple of killings, throws in a catastrophe or two and ends with a wildfire to rival the one in "Bambi."
The handling of patriarchal authority here has some queasy echoes of Leni Riefenstahl's treatment of Nazi officials in Triumph of the Will, reminding one that Disney was the only Hollywood figure to befriend Riefenstahl when she visited in the 30s; but the adroit mixture of pantheism and sentimentality continues to be sufficiently "timeless" to allow Disney's heirs to recycle this picture endlessly (1942).
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Basically, it's a passable combination of Bambi , The Borrowers and Avatar (which plays in my memory as an animated picture).
In other hands, this Bambi-like sequence could be played for laughs…
Like Fantasia (1940), it will leave some viewers unimpressed, but like some eternal Disney classics -- e.g., Bambi (1942) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) -- it has lively sequences and unique characters that could have emotional traction.
…a side story that features one of the funniest uses of the Bambi soundtrack in years.
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Cassian crashes the ship against the walls and bangs around the hanger like Bambi on ice.